Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa has announced that his government will accept the recommendations of the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) regarding steps to be taken to bring about ethnic reconciliation through devolution of powers to the provinces. Senior minister Nimal Sripala De Silva will be the chairman of the PSC.
The PSC has started working on a wrong note. The United National Party (UNP), the Marxist Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP), the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and the Sri Lanka Moslem Congress (SLMC) have, for their own reasons, declined the invitation to join the deliberations of the PSC.
The PSC mirrors the composition of the present parliament. Naturally, the Tamils will be a miniscule minority and they could easily be outmanoeuvred and outvoted. An analysis of the peace initiatives since 1983 highlights that All Party Conferences had been used as a strategy to delay and deny justice to the Tamils. Thus Annexure C, worked out by the government of India in consultation with the leaders of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), was placed for approval to an All Party Conference by the Machiavellian president J R Jayewardene. Nothing came out of it, except the decision to confer citizenship to the stateless people of Indian origin.
Given the record of broken agreements and the competitive Sinhala politics, what is needed is a bipartisan consensus among the UNP and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party on the ethnic issue. If such consensus takes place and they come to an agreement with the Tamils, the extremists among the Sinhalese and the Tamils could easily be isolated.
Since the mid-1950s, two broad considerations have influenced the working of the Sri Lankan political system. First, the Sinhalese majority there should be a strong unitary state, with the central government controlling all powers. The second consideration, reflecting the Sri Lankan Tamil point of view, was their demand, through progressive stages, for decentralisation, devolution, federalism and a separate state. The devolution proposals contained in the Provincial Council Act and the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was an attempt to introduce elements of federalism in a unitary state.
To view ethnic insurgencies through the prism of majority-minority relations will be misreading the political dynamics of multi-ethnic states. The Tamils, who have specific grievances, should be recognised as a distinct nationality. Negotiations should take place between representatives of the government and the TNA and they should work out solutions to the manifold problems facing Sri Lankan Tamils in the north and the east — implementation of the language policy, Sinhalese colonisation of the Tamil areas, high security zones, violation of human rights, disappearance of the Tamils, withdrawal of armed forces and devolution to the provinces. In order to allay Sinhalese apprehensions, iron-clad guarantees should be provided that devolution to provinces should not lead to demand for separation.
In fact, Rajapaksa had made the right moves. Talks were held between the government and the TNA. In the thick of bilateral negotiations, Colombo announced that the government would set up the PSC. The TNA, too, extended support to the idea on the understanding that the process will start only after consensus between the two sides. And when Colombo went back on this solemn commitment, TNA felt betrayed.
In countries where peaceful solutions have been found to ethnic insurgencies, it had been a result of direct negotiations between the government and the aggrieved. Rajiv Gandhi-Longowal Accord of 1985 was the culmination of negotiations between the Indian government and the Akali leaders. The accord conceded a few demands of the Akalis and promised that other demands would be considered on merits. Elections were held and the Akalis were voted to power. The demand for Khalistan died a natural death.
The Mizo Accord signed in June 1986 provides important lessons. Here again, negotiations took place between two hitherto antagonistic forces, the underground government of the Mizo National Front led by Laldenga and representatives of the government of India. Under the terms of the agreement Mizoram was granted statehood in February 1987. Since then Mizoram has undergone remarkable transformation. The Mizos, while maintaining their separate identity, consider themselves as Indian citizens.
Negotiations are taking place to bring to an end the longest insurgency in India, namely the Naga revolt for an independent state. Talks are going on between representatives of the central government and the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN). The efforts are successful, as is evident from the rapid decline in violence.
The separatist struggle for an independent state of Aceh in Indonesia came to a close as a result of successful talks between the Achenese rebels and the Indonesian government. The root of the conflict lies in repressive Indonesian policies, specifically exploitation of Acheh’s vast natural resources, violence against Achenese civilians and Jakarta’s failure to respect past commitments. Following unprecedented damage caused by the tsunami, the two sides realised the futility of violence and on 15 August 1995 signed an agreement in Helsinki that provides for “special autonomy” to Acheh. The Achenese model should be of relevance because like the Sinhalese, the Javanese are also opposed to federalism. The special autonomy status to Acheh, it must be underlined, is within the constitutional framework of a unitary Indonesia.
The Sri Lankan tragedy will continue until the political leadership realises that the Lankan Tamils have genuine grievances and a solution can be found only by meaningful negotiations with the TNA and by giving Tamil areas a large measure of self-governance. After the decimation of the LTTE the political outlook unfortunately has changed for the worse.
According to powerful sections in the government, Sri Lanka faced only one problem, the menace of terrorism; it was crushed in 2009; there is no ethnic problem in Sri Lanka today. The demand for effective regional autonomy has suffered serious reverses.
The writer is former senior professor, Centre for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Madras.
Email:suryageeth@sify.com
(Nairobi) – South Sudan has committed serious abuses against civilians in its anti-insurgency campaign in Jonglei state, Human Rights Watch said today. Soldier’s abuses and conflict with rebels have caused thousands of civilians to flee, making them especially vulnerable to recent large-scale attacks in an ethnic conflict in the same region. At the same time, the army, massed in largely empty towns, has failed to protect civilians from these attacks.
When he decided to contest as the TNA’s Chief Ministerial candidate at the upcoming Northern provincial poll, it was not the first time that former Supreme Court Judge, C. V. Wigneswaran became a newsmaker.
Seven months after the unceremonious sacking of the country’s 43rd Chief Justice, another former Supreme Court Justice assumes political centre stage following a decision by the country’s main Tamil party to field a highly respected jurist and intellectual, native to the Jaffna District as its choice for the first-ever chief minister of the Northern Province at the forthcoming provincial poll.
Former Justice of the country’s highest court, C.V. Wigneswaran, renowned for his courageous positions both on and off the bench, enters the political fray at a crucial juncture. His candidacy will bring to the fore not only the fundamental issues pertaining to national reconciliation and the Tamil struggle for political autonomy at a decisive point in Sri Lanka’s history, it will also elevate the debate about the systematic collapse of the country’s judicial system, a deterioration Justice Wigneswaran warned of on his last day on the bench of the Supreme Court in 2004.
Hope our quarrels never stop.
( July 18. 2013, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The practice has been around for millennia, but the term was born in 1944, out of a movie. In ‘Gaslight’1, a man uses a series of manipulative tricks to drive his wife insane. These include surreptitiously increasing and decreasing the gaslights in the house while pretending that the lighting has remained constant. As his wife moves from doubt and perplexity to terror, he cuts her off from friends/allies, so that her dependence on him becomes complete.
Bishop of Jaffna district Rev.Fr.Thoman Saundranayakam met senior member of the European Union and the Austrian ambassador to SriLanka Raimoo Majid at Jaffna today and said Tamils were annoyed by activities carried out by Sinhala majority community.
17 July 2013
I’m not a religious person. I don’t go to church very often. But I was in church last Sunday because my beautiful and talented Hindu friend invited me to listen to her choir at an event titled HymnFest ’13 – a festival of hymns for brass, organ, choir and congregation. So there I was at the quaint old St. Andrew’s Scots Kirk, Kollupitiya, listening to the powerful voices of a very ethnically mixed choir, including my Hindu friend.
[TamilNet, Thursday, 18 July 2013, 12:33 GMT]
The verdict is due today in a case filed by the Ampara urban council that seeks an order to demolish Daya Apparel factory owned by Daya Group of Companies.
